The Gremlin Effect

"The Gremlin Effect causes devices to malfunction in strange and unpredictable ways..." 

Today was slower paced in general however quite frustrating regarding technology!

I started off by looking through the sales copies for some books which were missing from the production room for the stock check. We receive 20 books from each print, some are kept in the production room, in editorial and then around the office as 'sales' copies. I found about half of the missing titles and updated the list but didn't get a chance to ask about the others as I was then asked to provide an update on the London Book Fair appointments so I printed off the 3-day schedule along with the invitee list.

I was really battling all morning with Excel to update the stock list as the colourful swirly wheel would appear every other character or mouse click. I don't know what's wrong with my computer of late but last night it just froze and crashed. Today wasn't much better and it was only going to get worse.

At lunchtime I went to pick up the signed lease for the new office premises from the solicitors which I knew would make the Director very happy.

I had also been asked to prepare some materials for a publisher ie the spread/layouts, synopsis and jacket/cover. I spent over an hour on this and tried to print the documents from 4 different computers. Either the programme would crash or the computer would, or the printer would print the wrong thing even though it was fine on the 4th computer.. At one point the whole server went down and everyone lost connection. I was getting increasingly frustrated because of the time pressure and because nothing seemed to be working!

The day ended with me and another intern spending one hour tearing up folders and folders of old accounts - the office doesn't have a shredder so we had to do the honours. My back was pretty sore by the end of it but at least we got it done.

This weekend I'll continue to proofread the book I've been given as I cannot concentrate in the office when I'm interrupted every 5 minutes! I have to figure out what to do about that...